True stories about roots, identity, and place.

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You Are Here is a bit more than two years old now, and it has been a privilege during these past 26 months of themes to step into the shoes of story-tellers from all over the country. Together we’ve explored the endlessly inspiring topic of “place” in the context of everything from travel and food to mess, gender, memory, and laughter, and our minds and hearts have expanded along the way.

During this short time, members of the administrative team have shifted and changed, as is the case with many volunteer-driven projects. So too has YAH’s vision and reason for being—we started mostly as a group of writers who wanted some company in the blogosphere, adding guest writers, peer editing, and a group of fabulous Writing Fellows along the way.

It’s been fun. It’s been inspiring. And it’s been a lot of work.

Now with just a handful of people working behind the scenes—with other writing and editing projects that need attention (in addition to things like jobs and children)—we have decided to take a break. The blog is on sabbatical, which offers us both a moment of respite as well as space to more fully consider possible next steps.

While we don’t have a timeframe for this sabbatical, we do have a goal—we’re going to compile and publish a Best of You Are Here anthology. This gives us an opportunity to celebrate the great story-telling that so many people have shared here, and to re-set our course in the light of our best work. Look for announcements and updates about this project throughout 2017.

And, in the meantime, there are 297 stories—297!—in the archives (organized by theme). That should keep you busy for a few months!

A courthouse is designed to provoke obedience. Everything from the unforgiving stone floors and stuffy silence to the polished rails and guards in their creaking leather belts demands order. And why shouldn’t it? It’s a place where justice is meted out. A place where disappointments like us went to be punished.

We were nervous before we stepped inside, and the cop who checked us in certainly didn’t help.

“Sir!” he barked at my husband. “You can’t bring that in here.”

We looked around, wondering what contraband he could possibly be carrying.

The guard sighed and pointed at the waist of my husband’s carefully pressed black suit pants. “Your knife, sir. No weapons are allowed in the building.”

Born and raised in the country, my husband carries a pocketknife everywhere he goes. It’s as much a part of his ensemble as a watch, wallet, and cell phone, and neither of us had even considered our destination that morning as we prepared for what promised to be one of the hardest days of our married life.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” he stammered, sliding it from his belt. “Can I leave it here with you?”

“Nope,” the guard replied. “We’re not allowed to keep personal items at the desk.”

There wasn’t time to make the long walk back to the parking garage, and we stared, genuinely flummoxed and more rattled than we had been when we arrived. But then my husband saw a stand near the door that held plastic umbrella bags. He marched toward it, ripped one from the peg, and headed back outside to the courtyard. I couldn’t help but follow.

Choosing the closest planter, he wrapped the bag around the knife, tied it securely, and then began to dig a hole in the moist earth between a row of freshly planted purple and white pansies and the concrete wall. Then he dropped the bag in the hole and filled it in.

When he stood, I saw his hands were dirty—as dirty as I felt.

For weeks, I’d known this day was coming. It had been inevitable ever since we discovered the condo we’d bought, along with hundreds of others, hadn’t been built to code. Despite tens of thousands of dollars spent on repairs, which more than doubled our mortgage, the place still wasn’t close to passing inspection. In a few months, our savings account was siphoned dry, and bill after bill slipped into “past due” status.

Rather than continue to throw money into what had become an 1,100-square-foot pit (with new carpet no less), we’d opted to file chapter 13 and cut the rope keeping the financial albatross around our necks. Now, I imagined everyone who looked at me saw a scarlet “B” on my chest.

There was something so final, so disheartening, about stashing his knife that I couldn’t help but sob. It was like he was burying everything we’d worked so hard for—hopes for home ownership and putting down roots. Of finally being able to paint a wall yellow or blue instead of sterile rental white. All of it was going into the earth with that blade.

The rest of the day passed in a florescent-lit haze. We entered the courtroom and numbly sat down next to our lawyer. And when the time came for us to officially declare our insolvency, we stood and locked hands—more grateful than ever for each other. Shame, heavy as it might be, sits a little easier on two shoulders.

As the judge droned on for what felt like hours, we waited, letting the waterfall of meaningless words fall over us. The entire time, I imagined I could still feel that dirt on our hands, ground into the whorls of fingers and the crooked lines of life and love.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I thought. From it we were made, and to it we shall return—all at once or one piece at a time.

After the papers were signed, we escaped into the sunlight of a perfect Florida afternoon, exhausted and looking for the closest bar—unsure what to do now that we were, for all intents and purposes, homeless. We were so desperate to leave, in fact, that we nearly forgot the knife, but my husband remembered and went back. It reemerged as clean and sharp as when it went in, and—though it didn’t feel so at the time—the same would be true of us after seven long, lean years.

I won’t lie. Being flat broke and without credit was rather close to the bone, but it also had a way of clarifying things. The finances were tight, but somehow, there was always enough. The few things we did have were enjoyed richly. My husband and I grew to love each other in truer and more meaningful ways, and each day, we found the answer to Jesus’ question “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matt. 6:25) was a resounding yes.

* * * * * *

“The Blade and the Earth” was written by Jamie A. Hughes. Jamie is a writer, editor, and unapologetic St. Louis Cardinals fanatic who currently lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband, two adopted sons, and a pair of needy cats. A former high school teacher, she now works as the managing editor of In Touch Magazine and is struck dumb by her good fortune. She blogs at tousledapostle.com and can be found on Twitter @tousledapostle.

We turn off all the lights, except the Christmas decorations. The tree sparks with red, gold, green, and blue. White strands frame the window, reflecting off the glass, doubling or even tripling the luminescent specks. The only other light in the room is the glow of the fire in our big stone fireplace.

It’s quiet, but for the soft crackling of the logs and occasional pops of moisture escaping the wood. The light of the flames dances on the walls around the room, flickering and fading, growing and changing. I have always been drawn to the warmth of fires, where the world seems to slow down, where there is space to ponder and ruminate, where I find reassurance, peace, hope.

* * * * *

You start with the small stuff: twigs and shredded paper, maybe some dryer lint or pieces of cardboard. Then come some bigger pieces of wood, thicker branches and split logs. Be mindful of the air: leave spaces for oxygen and heat to move around. Strike the match.

The flames spread slowly at first. Sometimes they need a little help, a little breath: don’t blow them out, blow them through. Let the air pass over and under and through the cracks and spaces between the twigs and logs. Be patient. As the smaller fuel burns away, the bigger pieces start to catch and you’ve done it: you’ve created something that breathes.

* * * * *

Camp outs in our Girl Scout troops were long days of hiking and cooking and relishing the outdoors, and they ended with campfires. In the red glow, flickering and fading, growing and changing, we’d sing songs, mostly silly and nonsensical, and roast marshmallows, promptly squashed between graham crackers and chocolate. Our moms — our troop leaders — called us firebugs. These were days of learning self-sufficiency and self-reliance, working together and connecting with nature. We didn’t know it then though, or maybe we did but we didn’t care. For us, it was just friendship. There was so much world out ahead of us yet.

Summers at home growing up were often punctuated with similar campfires: out in the backyard on the edge of the woods, my dad would build a little fire and set his lawn chair up close enough to reach the flames with a long stick. As the twilight faded and the stars showed themselves, the glow of the campfire lit up our faces. We would sit out in the backyard, listening to the frogs trill by the pool or watching the bats flit by overhead. We would talk, sure, but we would also sit in the quiet of the warm evening and stare as the flames licked the logs, charring them, breaking them down, consuming them.

* * * * *

At our own home now, my husband and I track seasons by where we lay wood for the fires: in the winter and spring, the fireplace, in summer and early fall, the back patio in a small fire pit, surrounded by benches and cushioned seating. Backyard parties always end with friends and family gathered around the red-yellow gleam. As some friends call it a night, others just gather in closer, filling their glass of wine or grabbing a blanket to wrap around their shoulders. This is when conversations start to change: boisterous talk of friends catching up turns to slow, more thoughtful topics. This is sacred time.

Under the cover of mostly-darkness, faces lit only by a gentle blaze, we let down our guards and talk of the things that have troubled us, the things that have changed us, the things that have given us hope. Our voices lower and conversations become quieter as they become more serious. We choose words carefully, laying out offerings at the feet of our friends, which are picked up gently and turned over thoughtfully in the light of the campfire.

* * * * *

In the soft light of the fire and the Christmas lights, we can stop the world. We can stop the worry and the bustle and things that up-end us. We watch the lights flicker and fade, grow and change. Then, the flames die down low. The charred logs crumble and the ash settles. We lay down our weariness as we look toward the new beginning coming soon to save us, to give us another chance, to give us hope for brighter days. And we sit quietly in this space, in the glow of the last red embers.

Jamie Y. Watkins is a wife, sister, daughter, and friend. She works at a non-profit by day and goes to school at night, trying to find time to write in between. Her biggest passions are travel– France in particular– film, and good conversation. She lives in New Jersey, where she and her husband open their house to others with good food and wine. She blogs at Seek.Follow.Love about wrestling with faith and church, looking for meaning in the every day, and feeling her way through life.

Every year, we ate Christmas dinner at Grandma’s house. Driving there in the car, I’d pull my nose out of the book about the time we’d hit the big hill on her gravel road. A few minutes later, we’d see the small, white house – her closest neighbor.

I got a lot of reading done in the 45 minutes it took to get from our house to hers.

As we slowed down to turn into the long lane that was her driveway, I wondered which of my cousins were already there. Was there still enough daylight to go exploring in the barn? Would we get in trouble if we climbed on the roof of the pig-less pig pen? Would the roof cave in under our collective weight? Regardless, I knew just up ahead was an evening filled with cousins, presents and good food.

I’m not sure whose idea it was, but at some point we got away from our traditional holiday meal of ham and cheesy potatoes. Maybe it was because, as grandma got older, the adults wanted to take some of the responsibility off her hands. My aunts started offering up soups-usually chili, potato, and vegetable.

It’s the vegetable soup I remember most. As a kid, I wouldn’t touch the stuff. At home, when I started smelling a roast cooking in the oven, I became disappointed, rolling my eyes and hoping Mom would at least remember to cut me some raw carrots. I couldn’t stand them cooked. Until I discovered ranch dressing, I didn’t like the potatoes prepared with the roast either. Pot roast was definitely not my favorite meal. To make matters worse, I knew the leftovers from this meal would end up being vegetable soup.

My mom and her sisters liked vegetable soup though. In our family, it was a tradition all its own. Grandma liked hers with a can of Brooks chili beans in it. Most of the men didn’t like diced tomatoes in theirs; but at Christmas dinner, the women put them in anyway because the men gravitated toward the chili. A little cabbage, carrots, corn, green beans, potatoes. Celery was optional. Is it any wonder I didn’t like this soup as a kid? It was downright healthy!

While the soups simmered on the stovetop, we’d dig into the appetizers. One of the many hunters in our family usually offered up venison summer sausage, partnered with squares of cheese on a round Ritz cracker. Someone would have picked up a cheeseball from the local grocery store deli. It was my favorite, the perfect balance of cream cheese and shredded cheddar. Years later, I’d write one of my aunts, asking if she could get me the recipe.

Long before Pinterest came on the scene, the women in our family served up trendy appetizers and sides. I remember ranch-flavored oyster crackers, apple salad with Snickers whipped in, marshmallow cream fruit dip, Chex mix and Puppy chow. Every inch of counter space and the entire kitchen table filled to overflowing.

Grandma always mixed up a pitcher of Kool Aid. One of our aunts would stand near the disposable cups, ready to hand off the Sharpie marker to ensure we’d only use one – our own – the entire evening. The adults always had coffee. Cup after cup of coffee.

If us kids ate all our soup – as if any of us were still hungry by that point – we could move on to the dessert table. One of my aunts shares her birthday with the Christ child, so we’d sometimes have cupcakes or a birthday cake. Also cheesecake, Rice Krispy treats and pecan (pronounced puh-con) pie.

I know what love is if it can be offered up on a platter of cheese and crackers. If it smells anything like a stovetop full of soups. If it looks like my grandma and her adult daughters bustling away in her kitchen. If it tastes like cherry cheesecake. If it can be heard in the uproariousness of thirty-plus people in one single-story farmhouse.

Traci Rhoades lives in southwest Michigan, somewhere in a triangular section connecting Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids with all things Lake Michigan. She and her husband parent one daughter. They have dogs, cats, ducks, pigs and chickens–a number that is always changing, as farm animal counts tend to do. She enjoys watching sports, reading, cooking and all things Bible study. She is a writer. When she first started blogging, she wondered about what unique voice she could bring, eventually landing on this one line: A country girl goes to church.

We arrive early in the morning, while the mist from the sea is still floating in among the long rows of stones. We can barely see the tops of the trees through the fog. The sky is a dull, opaque gray that blocks out the sun. It is eerily beautiful.

Everything is covered in a thin layer of dew and the air is chilly, chillier than I expected. I wrap myself in the only extra piece of clothing I brought: a red and gold scarf that clashes with my rose-colored shorts and teal sneakers.

No one knows exactly why the stones are standing here or what purpose they served. A local legend, dating back hundreds of years to the Celtic past of the region, tells of Roman soldiers turned to stone by the wizard Merlin.

In my childhood, I was captivated by Celtic stories of priestesses, fertility rites, and the struggle between the feminine spirituality of pagan traditions and the patriarchal religion of Christianity. Stories set in wild forests, on mystical islands, and in big craggy castles enthralled me. Now standing in a field of mysterious stone formations on the Breton coast, I feel like I am walking through those enchanted tales.

This is Brittany. Stretching out into the Atlantic in northwestern France, Brittany, or Breizh, is one of the six Celtic nations, where Celtic languages continue to be spoken. Its distinct cultural heritage dates back to the early medieval era. We have visited our beloved France before: strolled the cobblestone streets of Paris, rode bicycles through vineyards of Chardonnay and Syrah, basked in the sun of the French Riviera. This is a different France, earthy and untamed.

Here I stand, on the southern shores of Brittany, on the Gulf of Morbihan, in a town called Carnac, known for its Neolithic menhir, or standing stones. There are thousands of stones, dating back thousands of years. Some in long rows, some stacked to form tombs and burial chambers, and others just standing alone, towering, keeping solemn watch, marking time as centuries go by.

The Ménec alignments are eleven rows of stones standing in a grassy field, and that’s where my husband and I wander on this misty morning. At the western end of the field, the stones rise up way above our heads. My husband pretends to hold up a large stone that is tilted toward the ground and I laugh. As we walk along the rows, the stones get smaller and smaller, as if sinking into the soft soil below. At the eastern end, they are barely two feet high.

Later in the afternoon, we walk past a copse of trees, thin spindles of wood, partially covered in lichen, ivy vines snaking up the trunks. The light is ethereal and golden, breaking through the leaves and flooding the area. It feels otherworldly. Even the air feels different, cool but weighty. It is easy to see how legends of wizards and Druids, priestesses and sorceresses came about in this misty place.

And it calls us to slow and observe, to wonder and wander around these stones that stand guard, these trees that cast spells. It invites us to graze our fingers along the rough edges of stones who have stood on this ground for thousands of years. Go ahead, ask your questions of us and we will tell you all that we have seen.

The stones hold secrets and the trees offer communion and the cool, damp mist coming in from the sea cloaks it all in a mystical magic I had never seen before. We are walking through the present, but also through the past. We are out in the open, but also within the close quarters of ancient whispers.

Here, I am connected with the past, entrenched in it. The history isn’t on display in a museum, kept safely behind glass. It is here, where I can reach out and touch, where I can wander inside it, where I feel the pull of time transporting me back through the centuries. And it leaves me with the incredible impression of magic and legend and secrets, all tucked into the beautiful seashores of northwestern France.

* * * * *

Jamie Y. Watkins is a wife, sister, daughter, and friend. She works at a non-profit by day and goes to school at night, trying her best to find times to write in between. Her biggest passions are travel–France in particular– film, and good conversation. She lives in New Jersey, where she and her husband open their house to others with good food and wine. She blogs atSeek.Follow.Love about wrestling with faith and church, looking for meaning in the every day, and feeling her way through life. Twitter: @jamieywatkins Facebook: @jywatkinswriter

The black suede coat my sister passed down didn’t fit me quite right, but it let me play the part of the cosmopolitan European with a little more believability, so I cherished it.I loved wearing it with my knit burgundy scarf tucked in at the collar. I loved how it trailed around my shins as I clip-clopped through airports with bags of gifts and luggage I bought to blend in.

I was flying home for Christmas. I remember changing planes in London, walking down the dismal beige corridor from whatever low-budget airline I’d just taken to the bright spacious British Airways international terminal where I would board my usual flight to Denver. I had been living abroad for a couple years and flying often enough to want to appear confident, worldly, and self-possessed as I navigated the airports of the world.

On this particular day, I got into the line at the gate and stepped up close — very close — to the person ahead of me, just as I was used to doing in post offices and grocery stores in eastern Europe. But I only stood there a moment or two before I started getting strange stares from my fellow passengers.

I was standing less than a foot behind the person in front of me, near enough for my long, ill-fitting coat to graze the back of their boots. All of a sudden I was painfully aware that I was applying my new-found eastern European personal space rules to a bunch of Americans.

Embarrassed, I stepped back a few feet and sheepishly looked around. Surveying the line, I realized I was surrounded by a field of North Face parkas, Denver Bronco hats and Colorado college team t-shirts. These were my people. We might have been in a boarding line in London, but these were westerners, used to wide open spaces and neighborly elbow room that spans miles.

Personal space is one of those secrets you learn only by trial and observation —by finding yourself on the receiving end of strange stares, or by being cut in front of when you habitually leave too much space between you and the postal clerk. My moment of embarrassment in applying the wrong personal space rules to the wrong context was a moment when I became aware I had left one place and arrived in another without realizing it.

Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out where you are.

Furthermore, airports are full of another type of ambiguous space, places of boundaries and thresholds. Doorways or hallways, corridors, waiting rooms, boarding lines — these are not destinations in and of themselves. They are liminal, or in-between, places; places where we make transitions or where changes happen.

Liminal spaces can be places of discomfort, anxiety, and self-consciousness, but also of freedom. What I experienced during my years of frequent travel was both the anxieties of transition, and, more significantly, the presence of God in those spaces. Liminal spaces were where God met me more intimately because I was in motion, open to surprises.

There was the Christmas morning flight when I spent an hour in on a layover, reading from Isaiah in the Bible laid open on the airport chapel table; or the times when the music in my earbuds would transform an ordinary security checkpoint into a holy sea of pilgrims. One flight, two missionary women were seated in my row and we spent nearly the whole flight sharing struggles and praying together.

And once, a German woman in a train station who saw me crying in a moment of frustration promised, “Morgen Besser,” which I understood as, “it’ll be better in the morning.” In the enchanted terrain of liminal space, I felt carried and carried along.

Morgen Besser. God has always spoken the most clearly and dearly in these secret spaces of travel, holding me as closely as baggage that might be lost along the way.

When I think now about how vividly God met me in those turbulent times, I am tempted to think that I no longer have access to knowing Him with that particular intimacy. Then I remember, life itself is a liminal space. I don’t have to be on an actual journey; there enough metaphorical ones to keep me alert. We’re all moving between birth and death, between one identity and another almost constantly, and God is still waiting to meet me in these in-between, unsettled places.

* * * * *

Jennifer Stewart Fueston writes in Longmont, Colorado where she lives with her husband and two young sons. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania. This year, her poems have appeared in Windhover, The Other Journal and The Cresset. Her chapbook of poetry entitled, Visitations, was published in 2015. She blogs very sporadically at jenniferstewartfueston.com and uses Twitter (@jenniferfueston) primarily during playoff football and for ranting during election season.

She gave me the book of matches and watched me slowly draw the bud against the scratch. She grabbed it back, You’ve got to go fast, see? Boom! Zip! She laughed and gave me the lit match with her brown wrinkled hands.

Put it in that hole there. See the flames? You just lit the grill! Now you can cook steakettes whenever you want. I confidently dropped the frozen patties from the butcher paper onto the grate.

Little girls aren’t allowed to touch matches.

* * *

Alright. We can do whatever we want today! No one is the boss of us! We can swim, play cards, eat popsicles, eat your Reese’s! It’s the Lazy Lagoon! Anything goes!

I smiled and nodded eagerly. This was every 8 year old’s dream.

I’d been in my rainbow bathing suit since 6:30am, excited for the day at my beloved Gramma’s. We started by making her big circle king bed with the furry leopard bedcover. I watched her put on bright coral lipstick, pose in the mirror, and spray White Shoulders on her neck. Then we went downstairs to make Grampa breakfast in the iron skillet before he went to work.

Go get me a beer and we’ll watch my Cubbies. I got her an Old Style from the fridge next to the TV outside in her covered patio and joined her on the black porch swing for the late morning game. I leaned on her soft arm and we rocked.

After eating I wandered around her Southside Chicago backyard. There were big bright flowers that matched my Gramma’s clothes along the high white fences, and a deep cement pool. I jumped off the diving board.

You in the pool, Aimee? Be safe in there! Don’t let the sharks getcha!

She cackled, slapped her thigh, and shouted out the Jaws theme. I rushed to the ladder and decided to clean the pool. I knew how to work the long brush without hitting the electric wires above and how to skim bugs and petals out with the net. Then I floated on the raft with my hands behind my head.

Little girls aren’t allowed to swim alone.

* * *

After a while Gramma came out from under the patio, stretched, and clapped her hands.

Who’s ready to play cards? No Go Fish. No Old Maid. We’re playing Rummy, and we’re playing for blood. You’re going to have to win fair and square.

I scrambled out of the pool, my eyes twinkling.

She shuffled the deck three different ways and flicked the cards across the table. When I won a hand she shouted, Ah! You got me, kid. But no more! and she got up, walked around her chair, and declared, The Worm Has Turned! She cursed my cards. I cursed hers. We laughed so hard.

Little girls aren’t allowed to sass grown-ups.

Before cooking dinner she went to vacuum and I walked down the kitchen stairs to the basement bar.

I loved it down there surrounded by beer signs, fancy bottles, swizzle sticks, and napkins with jokes on them. I cleaned the counter and put out glasses. I asked imaginary guests about their families, just like Gramma would ask her dozen delighted siblings and their seventy kids when any of them came over. On earlier visits I learned the boring colors – vodka, gin, bourbon, wine – did not taste good. But liquors tasted great.

I poured myself some of the emerald green Crème de Menthe, my favorite. It coated and warmed my throat. I had another.

Little girls aren’t allowed to drink.

I woke up on the floor behind the bar with my Gramma leaning over me. Hey, you alright? Come on upstairs. I stood up dazed and followed her. In the kitchen, I ate some Reese’s peanut butter cups while she cooked dinner. She bellowed out a German song, acted out scenes from The Honeymooners, and danced with her spatula. I giggled and joined her. She told dirty jokes, too.

But don’t tell your Mom. She wouldn’t like it.

* * *

We watched the best shows of the 1980s at night: Family Feud, Archie Bunker, and Facts of Life, taking breaks for popsicles and HoHo’s. The vertical blinds lazily clinked against each other in the soft breeze. The room smelled like chlorine, cold cream, and Jean Naté.

After the news Gramma brushed her teeth and put on more lipstick.

In case I die in my sleep.

I laid awake between my Gramma and Grampa, licking chocolate off my smile in the dark. I had three more days to be a grown-up with Gramma. Then my Mom would bring me home and I’d have to be a little girl again

* * * * *

Aimee Fritz is an introvert who delights in telling long, true tales about everyday absurdities in her suburban life. She finally believes in an unseen God, hopes to someday feel qualified to parent her kids, and is now allergic to every food she used to enjoy. Read more of her stories about world changers, souls, and big mistakes atfamilycompassionfocus.com

Mt. Olive Methodist Church was just up the road from the house where I grew up, at the top of a steep gravel hill. Many a sticky summer day, my brothers and I would ride our bikes or walk the dogs to the church and back. If we rode our bikes, I had to be careful–the hill going down from the church entrance was a big one. Most of the time, I walked my bike down, while my brothers left me literally in their dust. The few times I worked up the nerve to ride my bike down the hill, I ended up falling.

Even though we weren’t members there, I always felt comfortable inside the church. Looking back, I realize why.

The Holy Spirit was there. For the Israelites in the wilderness, He appeared as a cloud by day and fire by night. The Church symbolizes His presence with water. A mighty wind. A whisper. In my childhood, the Spirit of God rested right by my side at Mt. Olive Church. The church never locked its doors, so it was always open to me. I know they say people make up the church, but those four walls meant church to me as much as any group ever has.

I’d run up the four carpeted stairs to the red front doors. Opening these, you’d enter a small foyer. I always wondered who it was that thought to put the wooden swinging doors between the foyer and the sanctuary, but it must have been a smart individual who realized these doors wouldn’t make as much noise when a squirmy child has to be taken out of the service. My mom could have used doors like that, in our own church, with an unruly daughter like me.

I spent hours “playing church” at Mt. Olive. I’d sing and play piano from the hymn book and give mock sermons to whichever dolls I’d brought with me. There was always an altar call at the end. Later, that same altar called to me in some of my darkest moments as well. To this day, I do my most serious business with God at altars.

When my granddad succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease, I’d never lost a close relative, and I grieved at the altar of this little church. I spent some time reliving the memories I had of granddad’s farm. After a short while, I found the peace I’d been seeking. I knew Granddad didn’t have trouble remembering things any more; and if God had any fence posts that needed mending, I assured him he’d found the perfect helper.

Not quite a year later, my uncle died tragically in a car accident. I went to that same altar, shed more tears, and asked God to watch over my cousins, my uncle’s daughters, who would now grow up without a daddy. I wondered at how difficult that would be for them.

Years went by and I moved away from home. From time to time, I’d visit the graves of family members in the cemetery across the road from Mt. Olive, but I rarely went inside her doors, until one rainy day in April of 2003. For months, I’d been planning our outdoor wedding. We had the chairs rented, the tent raised. and I dreamt of the picturesque setting by the pond where we’d say our vows before God, family and friends.

The first crack of thunder woke me up at 5:30 in the morning.

From the couch where I’d slept that night, I heard Mom walking down the hallway of my childhood home and called, “Mom, isn’t it a great day for an inside wedding?”A few hours later we’d called the caretakers of Mt. Olive, who were also our neighbors. They had no problem with us moving our wedding ceremony indoors. We’d still be able to use the chairs and tent for our reception.

Soon I found myself having yet another conversation with God at the altar of that little church. I made a vow before Him to love and honor my husband. He responded with another crack of thunder! We all smiled, thankful to be safe and dry inside the church. It wasn’t our original plan, but I knew letting this church be a part of our special day just fit somehow.

I heard recently Mt. Olive had closed her doors. One of our neighbor’s kids has bought it, and I don’t know what his plans are for the building. She’s not a church these days – not physically. But the work God did there over the years surely lives on. I know it does in me.

* * * * *

Traci Rhoades lives in southwest Michigan, somewhere in a triangular section connecting Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids with all things Lake Michigan. She and her husband parent one daughter. They have dogs, cats, ducks, pigs and chickens–a number that is always changing, as farm animal counts tend to do. She enjoys watching sports, reading, cooking and all things Bible study. She is a writer. When she first started blogging, she wondered about what unique voice she could bring, eventually landing on this one line: A country girl goes to church.

As a kid, I always thought it was odd that my grandparent’s house had its own name.

When my siblings and I piled into mom’s red minivan to drive the five winding hours to the South Carolina Lowcountry, we weren’t just headed to “Mimi and Pop’s house”—we were bound for the oyster-shell driveway of “Marshlands.”

Marshlands dripped with history. Huge oak trees, strung with Spanish moss, seemed to have been rooted in the front yard since Earth’s creation. A plaque on the ivy-draped front gates declared the house a National Historic Landmark due to its early 1800s construction and its use as a hospital during the Civil War.

Inside, among antique furniture and fraying Turkish rugs, I found artifacts of more recent, familial history—pictures of my parents smiling on their wedding day, newspaper clippings about Mimi’s real estate business and Pop’s run for lieutenant governor, photo albums of my older cousins as toddlers, always at least one caught red-faced and wailing in the camera flash. Pop’s reluctance to throw anything away (a tendency born from his depression-era childhood, perhaps) even made the fridge an excavation site for expiration dates gone by.

To me, the exact dates and details of Marshlands’ past didn’t seem especially relevant. But the house’s musty oldness—hinting at stories of antebellum balls, of wounded soldiers, of my mother’s teenage years—added to my certainty that Marshlands was magical. It seemed like the kind of house where all the stories I read started. Surely I would find a hidden room if I just pushed some hidden knob on the fireplace or tugged on the right dusty, leather-bound book on the shelves lining the study. I knew the massive wardrobe upstairs would lead me to Narnia, though I was too intimidated to get close enough to pass through. The giant vase in the back yard (an actual relic from the filming of The Jungle Book in the nearby Sea Islands) sent shivers down my spine in the best possible way, as I envisioned the cursed rubies and gold coins that must lie at the bottom.

Marshlands had its own sort of everyday magic, too, in the way that only familiar childhood places away from home can. Much of that magic came from Mimi, who was unfailingly gorgeous and refined with her red lipstick, perfect makeup, and elegant Southern accent. She served us lemonade and iced tea on the porch, taught us to play rummy, and took us to Boombears, the nearby toy shop that (coincidentally?) went out of business shortly after Mimi’s 18 grandkids passed the age of Beanie Babies obsessions.

Even after Mimi got sick, some of the childhood magic of Marshlands lingered. My siblings and I still climbed on the low-hanging branches of the oak trees and bounced on the trampoline with rusty springs. Mimi still served lemonade and rum cake (with increasing portions of rum as her eyesight dwindled). Pop still snored in front of TV college football, and woke up to protest when anyone changed the channel.

But when we left, my mom would cry—not “sad to leave” kind of tears, but tears of a sort of loss I couldn’t quite understand. I was a preteen who had never watched someone close to me slowly slip away.

After Mimi fell and broke her wrist, my mom and her siblings decided to move Mimi and Pop to a one-story house in my uncle’s neighborhood. They rented out Marshlands to strangers for a few years.

The next time I went into Marshlands was for the luncheon after Mimi’s funeral. Nothing had changed—and everything had changed. The gold-patterned wallpaper remained. The old books. The dust and faintly musty smell. But the house’s magic was harder to find. In the years since I’d been in the house, I’d gone off to college and started paying my own bills. I’d forgotten the rules for rummy. I’d realized that the wardrobe upstairs only held mothballs and fur coats.

After cleaning up from the luncheon, my cousins and I climbed into the attic and tried on Mimi’s old ballgowns. We each took a few pieces of jewelry. One cousin pocketed Mimi’s iconic red lipstick.

A few years later, we celebrated that same cousin’s wedding on Marshlands’ lawn. We watched her walk down the aisle between the oak trees we’d climbed as kids, then sipped champagne under the huge reception tent that had temporarily displaced the rusty-springed trampoline. Pop joined us on the dance floor for a shuffling Carolina swing, taking my cousin by the hand as the band played “My Girl.” Just before the newlyweds drove off in Pop’s antique car, we all lit lanterns that sailed past the trees and over the house’s red roof, creating a new kind of magic.

* * * * *

Dargan Thompson is a freelance writer and editor based in Orlando, Florida. Other than one glorious semester studying abroad in London, she has always lived in Florida, and she finds the Orlando airport quite accommodating for her frequent travels. Find her online atdarganthompson.com or on Twitter@darganthompson.

I was impressed by the monumental size of the stones, the mystery of how the ancients could build something so incredible and the sheer novelty of being next to such famous structures. But I tried to play it cool. We weren’t tourists; we had come to plant our lives in the Middle East.

We moved to Cairo at the end of summer with the heat still blazing down on us. We trekked through the unfamiliar streets to find grocery stores and vegetable stands, bakeries and shawarma stalls. Getting everything we needed for the week required at least four stops. Just running normal errands took every bit of effort my husband and I had as we explored our new city. Between the exhaustion from the heat and the mental strain of navigating life in a strange city, in a language we couldn’t yet understand — we were spent.

When friends offered to take us to the Pyramids, about half an hour from our new home, we welcomed the break from all of the practicalities.

Every photo I’d ever seen of the Pyramids showed these mammoth wonders of the world against a backdrop of breathtaking desert and not much else. Perhaps a camel or tourists looking like they were the size of ants would dot the base. But in pictures you get the impression that the Pyramids sit in the middle of an endless desert.

When we first spotted the famous landmarks, the peaks coming into view through the haze that seemed to hang in the air, every notion I had about the Pyramids changed.

Our car wove in and out of traffic. The honks were just friendly reminders to fight for space on the bumpy roads that transported twenty million people through the city. We rounded a bend and there they were—not in the middle of the desert but right in the heart of the bustling city. All those magnificent photos that are so famous are shot from the front of the Pyramids, with the Sphinx at the base.

But look from another angle and you will glimpse the complexities of life in this land—the ancient and the modern side by side. Wonders of the ancient world sit right next to the Pizza Hut.

Busloads of tourists flocked to the base of the Great Pyramid and the people of Cairo were there to meet them. Shades of brown — the sand, the stone, the summer haze that clings to the air — were dotted with color only by the red tasseled quilts atop the camels nearby. Men called after us in broken English, offering a photo atop a camel. We were told to avoid them as there is one price for getting on the camel. But once they get you on the towering animal, they will then tell you the price for getting down!

Women and children sat with their wares, replicas of the Pyramids and statues of Tut. The desert sun was blazing. But the women in flowing robes and heads covered and boys donning checkered bedouin scarves didn’t seem to mind the heat. As we passed, they all looked at us with sad eyes, trying to convey their great need so you would give your Egyptian Pounds or US Dollars to them instead of the next person that had the same exact statues for sale.

I stopped to smile at them but didn’t linger at the souvenirs. I didn’t want to look like the tank top-clad tourists. They seemed oblivious to why the Egyptian men stared at their bare shoulders when many of the local women covered themselves literally from head to toe.

I told myself we would surely get sick of the pyramids when friends who visited asked us to take them there. “How many times can you visit a pile of rocks and be amazed?” I thought. But standing next to them I wasn’t so sure. That pile of rocks sure had a way of making you feel small while simultaneously amazed at the power of what people can achieve together. When many of my Egyptian friends told me they had never even visited the Pyramids, I thought what a shame to not take in such beauty when it is literally moments from your home.

Life got busy though and we never made it back to the pyramids before our time in Egypt was cut short. After six months living in the land of the Pharaohs—we were again packing up to move back to the United States.

In those last few days in the city I regretted not spending more of the time just standing in awe, taking in the complete wonder of such a place. In all that time not wanting to look like a tourist, I had missed some of the ability to wonder at the rarity of the chance to live next to the Nile. I realized I could both call this place home and marvel at it.

We spent our last week in the country acting like complete tourists. We visited the Egyptian museum, the library at Alexandria, and sipped coffee in local shops. We took photos and marveled at the fact that we had made our home in the shadow of a wonder of the world.

As we left it’s shadow we tried to keep our eyes open for what wonders awaited us next.

Nicole T. Walters is a wife, working mom, and writer from metro Atlanta who loves to experience the messy, noisy, beautiful world and cultures not her own. A proud member of the Redbud Writer’s Guild, you can find Nicole writing and editing at a number of places online including The Mudroom, and SheLoves Magazine. She writes about finding God’s voice in all the noise, faith, and culture at Nicoletwalters.com and loves to connect on Facebook and Twitter.